Ketu's lungs burned from the run; rainwater poured from his shirt like a confession. He'd followed the shadow until Old Mahua Road spat him out into a tangle of back lanes and puddles—then the silhouette had melted into the night like smoke. The crate thumped unanswered behind him.
Back at the workshop the smell hit him first: wet metal, oil, the cold tang of someone who'd worked with tools in the dark. Lamps lay open on benches like exposed ribs. Copper ends stared up like eyes. Ten panels had been slit, housing screws stripped, a freshly smashed dome lay on the floor. A puddle had formed under the worst ruin—water inside the circuit, where no water should be.
"Who—" Ketu started.
"Someone came through here after you left," Rahul said in a voice that had learned to sound calm when it wasn't. He held up a splintered piece of bamboo—tool marks neat, practiced. "Not a child. Not a drunk. Someone who knew what to cut."
Jiya's phone camera trembled as she filmed their devastated rows for donors; the comments they'd posted hours ago now scrolled with heartless suggestions: "Scam?" "Tested?" "Refund." Meera's fingers flew over the crowdfunding dashboard—pledges paused, questions rose, donors withdrawing.
Ketu felt the world shrink to the damp bench and the ruined bulb. He thought of the child's shadow earlier, of the way a simple cut had turned hope into ruin. He thought of Suresh's wet silhouette hovering at the edge of the courtyard, like a dark punctuation mark.
"We'll set traps," Jiya said. She was already rummaging through drawers, pulling out lengths of thin wire and a roll of masking tape. "Motion wire, tamper tags. If they come back, we'll catch them."
"Catchers get caught," Rahul warned. "We need evidence before the council starts a witch hunt."
They worked past midnight. Ketu drilled new flanges, layered epoxy twice, sealed gaskets until his thumbs bled a little. They rewired the undamaged lamps with tamper-evident loops and hid one prototype under a tarpaulin as bait—wired to a small buzzer and a mossy can of paint that would spill if the wire was disturbed. Jiya set up a watch rotation; Meera drew maps of patrol routes; Rahul built a makeshift alarm from an old bicycle bell and a length of fishing line.
At two a.m., Ketu slept on a stack of foam. His dreams were all solder and rain. He woke to a shout.
"Police."
The word landed like a hand to the throat.
Lantern light—official, a high beam—swept the doorway. Boots thudded into the yard. Mukhiya Das stood at the head of the group, white kurta immaculate despite the weather; his face was a sculpted thing—carved nerves and authority. Two men in khaki followed, faces unreadable beneath wet caps. Behind them, villagers pressed close like paper against glass.
"What is this?" the senior officer asked, voice flat and low. He held a typed complaint in his hand, a municipal header visible through rain.
Ketu blinked. "It's—it's our workshop."
The officer's eyes skimmed the room, landed on the ruined lamps, and didn't soften. "A complaint arrived this morning," he said. "A lantern installed last night at Gupta's house malfunctioned and caused a small fire. Child burned, minor. Complaint says the lamp was installed by you. District inspector requires we secure the site and seize components for investigation."
The words cut through the workshop like cold wind. Gupta's house—two lanes over—was one of their installs. Ketu had checked that lamp himself before dawn. It had pulsed to life, steady as the breath in his chest.
"It couldn't—" Ketu began.
Mukhiya Das folded his arms. "Three days, boy. Prove it. Or everything stops."
The officer put on rubber gloves as if preparing a sterile surgery. "We will take the units into evidence. No one is to leave the village without permission."
"Permission from whom?" a voice shouted from the doorway. Suresh stood there like an accusation carved in oilcloth.
"From me," Mukhiya said.
Jiya's camera recorded the seizure in tight, urgent frames. Meera's jaw clenched. Rahul's knuckles whitened. Ketu stared at the officer and realized, with a cold clarity, what this meant: investigations. Delays. A stop to installations. Donors watching from screens while the rumor machine fed them clips of burning—no context, only flame.
He wanted to argue. He wanted to show the tamper tags they'd installed, the tests they'd run, the logs of voltage measurements. He wanted to make the officer see the cut wires, the fresh footprints leading away from the courtyard—heavy, booted prints that ran toward the market lane, not toward Suresh's kiosk. But when he opened his mouth, the officer slid the complaint across the table. The complaint was neat, professional, and named him.
Ketu's heart became lead. Scrawled at the bottom in a steady printed hand was a line that landed like a stone: "Witnesses state the installation was done by Ketu, son of Ramesh. Request immediate halt." Signed: an email address they did not know.
"Who filed this?" Ketu demanded.
The officer shrugged. "Anonymous complaint forwarded from the district. We must follow procedure."
Ramesh—his father—stood in the crowd, hands balled tight at his sides, face pale as wet clay. Ketu's eyes found his mother's; she looked as if someone had put a hand over her mouth and wouldn't let go.
"Your father will be called for questioning," Mukhiya said, the words even, final. "Until this matter is cleared, no more installations. Council meeting at dawn."
A slow anger spread through the workshop, hot and animal. Jiya spat on the ground, profanity sharp in the rain. Rahul cursed softly. Meera's eyes were small and bright as flint.
Ketu felt something else, though—not only anger but a tender thread being pulled. His family—his father's small grain stall on the lane; the loan Ramesh had taken to buy stock last winter; the way their neighbors had always nodded with that slight lift of the head—would be dragged into mud. If the district inspector's paperwork found a loose end, the creditors might come. His father's name would be sullied. His mother would have to hide her worry behind practiced smiles. Ketu felt the responsibility as a physical weight.
He stepped forward. "I didn't file anything," he said. "I didn't—"
"Whether you did or not is irrelevant," the officer said. "Evidence will decide."
Outside, a child began to cry. Someone muttered that Gupta's little boy had a burn on his arm. Someone else whispered about Suresh's sons—how they had been unemployed since the lamp campaign started. The workshop felt suddenly fragile, like stacked cards.
Ketu's mind clicked into motion—not a plan, but a dozen small, jagged steps. He needed proof. He needed to show the tampering. He needed to find the person who had cut the wires and the intelligence that had turned a neighborhood curiosity into a criminal complaint. He needed donors to see their footage and not turn away.
"Find the tracks," he said aloud. "Check the market alley. Whoever did this is sloppy in the mud."
Rahul grabbed his boots. "I'll go."
Jiya added, "I'll post the full unedited video. Let donors see what happened before the complaint."
Meera counted on her fingers. "We need to message every donor directly. Explain, ask them to freeze withdrawal. If they pull out now, this ends."
Ketu nodded. He felt the team's energy band around him like a light. They moved, a small, fierce unit, while outside the officer catalogued parts and Mukhiya frowned with a victorious gravity that made Ketu's stomach turn.
At the edge of the workshop, near the smashed dome, something glittered in the mud: a small metal tag, half-buried. Ketu bent, wet fingers pinching it free. The tag was stamped with a tiny logo—three concentric circles and an angular H. He didn't know the supplier's mark, but his brain liked patterns; he kept images of parts and vendors.
"Take it to Meera," he said, voice raw. "Cross-check suppliers. Find every source for that stamp."
Meera rolled up her sleeve and tucked the tag into her notebook. "If this links to a vendor who supplied tools to someone with motive—"
"—then we find motive," Ketu finished.
The bell of the village temple chimed in the rain, an old, indifferent sound. The officer waved the lamps into black plastic evidence bags. Mukhiya watched as if this was the tidy end of a play. Suresh lingered on the fringe, jaw tight.
Ketu stepped outside into the rain. His clothes clung; his teeth chattered. He thought of the crate still at the end of Old Mahua Road, the one he'd chased the shadow for. He thought of the silhouette that had vanished down the lane.
He would follow the tracks. He would find the shadow. He would clear his father's name.
Behind him, the officer closed the workshop door and locked it on a rusted pad—official and practical. The sound of metal clicking into place was small and loud as a verdict.
Ketu swallowed the sting of cold rain and fire. He ran.
Down the lane, a figure watched from the shadows—one hand tucked inside an oilcloth pocket, the other holding a matchbox with a peeling label. The figure's face tilted up as Ketu's silhouette passed; in that half-second the figure's eyes met his—black, unreadable.
The figure smiled.
Then the smile was gone, and the shadow melted back into the night.
Ketu did not see who it was. He only saw the tracks leading away, deeper into the market where rumor and business braided into one another. He ran toward them, and somewhere behind him, someone in a white kurta decided they had seen enough.
The chase had begun.